TypographyEloise Benissan

Helvetica...

Helvetica was my first glimpse at what typography is about. Through a 45 minute video I learned the importance of text and it's effect on the reader. It's not just about what the text says but almost more importantly it is about how the text is written. We started working with the simple word Helvetica and seeing how we could distort and destroy it in a way to still be able to read it yet it be completely different to the original piece. I think I could have destroyed the word a lot more than I did because although the words were distorted, they were not exactly destroyed.

The mind map was a way to capture ideas and thoughts from the video and what we had learned about typography.

Typographic Posters

I found these on a website with folders of graphic artists work and this was a great example of how words can be changed and molded to fit the message the artist is trying to communicate. One of my favorites was one of the largest ones, which I'm not too sure what it says exactly but I love the way the words look like they are made out of ribbon and they are so detailed and well designed. This poster was made by a group of artists called "C2F" and actually a lot of the posters I chose were made by that group.

These are my poster thumbnails that I spent a few minutes on each to come up with a few ideas for my own poster. I used some of my favourite posters by other artists as inspiration and I think it really led to a flow of ideas. I tried to be as creative as possible but I found it really difficult to draw distortion. What was hard was really stretching out the letters or compressing them the way they would be on the software. I’m happy with the process though because it did get my mind going and it led to some ideas I can’t wait to try in photoshop.

Moving On To Typographic Portraits..

This was my very first piece of work with portraits. I took a photo and using a simple sans serif font I was able to make something that looks a bit like me. I really enjoyed working on this and seeing how the different letters could really make a difference on whether the portrait looks realistic or not. For example I found that the dark and bolder letters could act as a shadow on the portrait and could create a sort of 3D effect.

Final Serif Portrait

On the left is my serif font typographic portrait which although I was very happy with it, I quickly realised that the shape of my hair didn't seem quite right on the portrait so I then change it to the design on the right to make the face look as realistic as possible.

Here are my first to last attempts at stamping the portrait with ink. One thing I noticed is the when the portrait has a whiter background, it has more depth and I think the human brain automatically creates shadow and depth in the face. Whereas when it is on black, the dark color doesn't allow that depth and makes the face look a lot more flat and less realistic. Taking this forward, I will probably use my design on lighter backgrounds than darker ones in order to not lose that depth.

Testing With Colors..

Here are the first color tests I did.. I experimented with nudes and even skin tones to see the effect they would have on the personality of the portrait. As I saw when I did the physical stamps, I noticed that when the portrait is darker than the background it gives a more realistic and detailed portrait.

Text Effects..

These are the text effects that didn't really work out when I was making them from the tutorial. I didn't understand why they weren't working but the more I used the layer styles and the different features in photoshop, the more I began to understand what affects what on the image.

This metal text effect was probably my biggest learning experience in this project because I didn't just follow the tutorial, I adapted it to what my design looks like. The tutorial was based on a text that was bolder and larger so I realised I would need to lessen the stroke and glowing effects so the effects weren't too overpowering.

This is probably the effect that worked out the best and applied the effect without taking away from the design itself. This was a really fun effect to make because by the time I was working on this I had gotten the hang of distorting and changing shapes and letter forms in photoshop.